While satellite TV operator SES Americom Inc. is best known marketing-wise for its IP-PRIME managed turnkey service for telcos, the company has gathered more customers and generated more demand for its advanced high-definition (HD) programming package.
That would appear to raise questions as to the future of the managed IPTV package. SES officials refused to say if the company is still actively marketing the offering to new customers.
SES started pitching IP-Prime, a managed, turnkey IPTV solution, as early as 2005 at the Telco TV show in San Diego. It was pegged as helping resource-limited telcos get to market faster and cheaper than building everything themselves.
The company wholesales the ecosystem to operators who would then retail it to their end users. While the service did make it out of some telco trials, soaring demand by early telco TV deployers for HD programming encoded using the MPEG-4 scheme raced farther ahead.
SES launched the MPEG-4 HD solution just a year ago this month.
SES-Americom has since landed telco customer Canby Telecom, Hargray Communications, Chibardun Telephone Cooperative, Comcast’s cable Web portal media center, VoD system provider TVN Entertainment and some dozen other telcos seeking the latest and greatest in video content.
The HD-4 package from SES has up to a 40-channel lineup of news, entertainment and sports programming from ESPN, Disney, Discovery, CNN, Fox News, MTV, and many others.
Because the MPEG-4 video standard improves broadcast efficiency, with excellent signal quality, HD-4 gives MPEG-2 video systems the quickest route to providing subscribers HDTV over their existing networks. The single-rack HD-4 solution can deliver 32 HD channels. SES-Americom has said that the package can help get content to market in 60 days.
“We are pleased that our HD-4 service has been able to help operators solve a technology infrastructure problem and satisfy their subscribers’ desire for HD channels,” said Bill Squadron, president of IP-PRIME, this past April, in prepared comments. “The MPEG-2 IPTV telcos have been clamoring for this extremely cost-efficient and complete HD solution. We can have the service up and running in 45 days, and our MPEG-4 HD picture quality is stunning.”
